I know of a recently fostered girl who was severely malnourished. Now at less than 2 she will eat until the food is no longer available. I was wondering if anyone knew if you could reprogram (for lack of a better word) eating habits or eating urges such as this child has? If we teach the child proper portions and nutrition now, will it stick?

The only thing to do is make her feel secure in any way possible. She's young enough that the feeling of not having enough will probably not stick with her once she's had love and security for a while.

I suggest doing something really fun (go to the park, play with her, color...whatever 2 year olds do. ) before she sits down to eat. Maybe let her help cook...can 2 year olds do that? Is 2 too young to stir something in a bowl or whatever?

And teaching her proper nutrition is a good idea. But she'll learn eventually from observing her foster family's eating habits. It'll click with her, I promise. They'll just have to be patient and give her lots of love, which I'm sure they're doing.

I don't think so. Not at least these days. If you notice most celebrities are pretty thin and they have personal chefs, personal trainers and elaborate home gyms to keep them thin.

Personally, I find my life to be very rich and abundant.

I would have to agree here. If you are financially well off, you can afford to have a trainer and you are fit and tone. I actually associate being poor to being fat. If you are fat you cannot afford a gym membership or a trainer and you eat poorly because you cannot afford to give yourself proper nutrion. Isnt it funny how we all have such different opinions of these things?

I have to agree with the others that think in terms of thin=well off. Fat=poor or at least not as well off.

I know in other cultures it's considered good to be chubby. My dh has a friend that visits often. He's from the northern part of China (hubby says "he's what you would call a hick" Everytime I would see him his greeting was "My your looking very fat today." With a big smile on his face like he had given me a compliment. After a few weeks of this I finally said, "are you planning on staying in the US when you graduate?"
"Yes" he said
"You need to stop calling me fat! You never tell an American woman she looks fat! It's not nice or polite to point out anyone's weight."
He was quite suprised and told me that where he comes from it's a compliment because it meant you could afford food and were well off. He asked me what he should be saying and I gave him a few like, "You're looking very fit, have you lost weight?" to this day 16 years later everytime he sees me he tells me that as a greeting.

Sarah

Sarah, that is too cute.
I can remember my dad always telling us girls "I hope you grow up fat and pretty like your momma". He'd then grin real big. We thought it was cute but she didn't.

Sarah,

My grandparents, (bless their hearts, by today's standards, they might be considered hicks too) also had an attitude that chubby meant you had enough money for food. Of course, they were young relatively poor married teenagers during the great depression, so I'm sure that influenced their attitude.

Now, I do relate being overweight to being poorer, because it is cheaper to buy unhealthy foods than real foods.

That's funny I've always associated being poor with being fat. In elementary my mom couldn't afford ballet, gymnastics, swim club or all the other things all the skinny athletic girls did. Plus eating at fastfood is way more fatting and cheaper than going out to eat a nice restaurant where you ask the chef to make subtitutions or that have nice food like broiled salmon with steamed veggies. I guess I never thought of poor people as thin, because I thought the rich people were the ones who could afford the home-gyms and gym memberships and personal trainers and lap pools in the backyards and everything else. I always had the fear that being fat showed the poorness because I also had the fear that being poor was like being stupid that people looked at us and thought "oh that's sad, they don't know any better". I'm fat because I'm an emotional eater and I'm still poor. Maybe when I get out of college I'll finally lost the weight and then I can have money and have a great body.

I don't have the article handy (in the car), but I was just reading an article in American Baby earlier today that talked precisely about this. It was about overweight toddlers. It stated that poor people have a higher chance of being overweight. NOT because of poor food choices, though it did say that poor food choices lead to one being overweight, but because of....TV! It stated that Hispanics and African-Americans are more prone to obesity than caucasians because they have a higher percentage of TV viewing as children than caucasian children.